General Magma

I wasn't sure whether this belonged here or in 'Community', but I've been thinking of gathering some outside perspectives & opinions on this. This is something I've been wrestling with for a while now, and it's pretty much reached the point of me needing to get it off my chest and discuss it somewhere as it's a pretty big dilemma. Perhaps some of you have experienced this or something similar to it, too. I'll keep the background behind this as short as I can to still cover all relevant points: I have ambitions to become a skillful artist (I want to do digital art at one point, drawing is my main focus), and on the side I have a fantasy world I've been working on and want to practice writing for so I can publish at least a few novels one day, but that's more of a side-thing compared to my visual art ambitions. Here's where the problem comes in. Going against my earlier decision this year to put LEGO on a back-burner and only make an occasional dinosaur or so, I went through a bit of a slum when it came to art and decided to do much more with LEGO again, and that it would perhaps add more variety, which turns out manifests in chaos now and over-variety. Anyhow, it quickly led to a lot of planning new projects and ideas and got to the point of amassing thousands of parts (which has also given added guilt and concern of wasting resources). However, these past few weeks I've been struggling to spend enough time on my art, and feel like having added projects in the realm of LEGO is weighing me down. Not just in terms of time, mind you, but in terms of allocating space I barely have, too, as well as mental focus and the time it takes to map things out in my head. There's only so much time and energy to allocate in a day and I can't do it all. It has even made me consider selling off that large lot of parts and minifig pieces again so I can get the money back and have the time I need to focus on my art, since I'm just struggling to balance it now. Even though I have a final gap year before I go to college next year, and should have plenty of time. But I felt more satisfied with the course I had taken earlier this year and am considering going back to keeping the brick-building at a minimum so I can put in the hours per day that I need to put into my art. People usually say "don't sell", but I think a lot of the pieces I've gathered won't be used much and I could always order pieces for projects that are actually being worked on instead of sizing up my collection for potential future projects. If I were to go through with undoing those plans and getting the pieces sold off again (considering it... and then I see all the pieces, I hesitate, and kinda want to keep everything around - cycle continues), I'd still stick with my plan of making an occasional creature from time to time and rounding off some fantasy scenes I had planned, but at the moment, I feel as if I'd be better off actually working on my main line of art and focusing on that, which takes many hours of time to develop skill in. At this point, all the LEGO plans and ideas feel like a distraction, and as if my art slum has somehow gotten me into "settling" for something short of what I actually want to do, 'trading' time I could spend on art. As much as I enjoy building LEGO, I just don't like how time, space and money consuming it (is/has become for me), from sorting to building to disassembling MOCs, and I find the art of drawing and sculpting (with the latter having come in more recently. It's still related to drawing, since it's a very helpful skill for draftsmanship) much more appealing at this point. I wish there was enough time in a day to do it all, but there just isn't and I need to keep up my progress if I want to accomplish those goals. Thoughts? Anyone here been through something similar?

They're not minifigures, so no, I don't.

New Horizons "And there, over the great hill's summit, beyond ruins crumbled and trees withered, stood a tall tower at the brink of a new horizon." The first in a series of medieval fantasy scenes. Comments appreciated! ~ GM

Some kind of huge space set would likely be received with open arms by many AFOLs.

That's no huge surprise to me! He's a very iconic LEGO character and still a very nice minifigure to this day. I also like seeing Johnny Thunder beat out Indy, sometimes licensed themes simply deserve a whooping... Nothing against them - quite the opposite - but original themes and characters should be at the top.

My uncle's uncle's brother's friend's uncle's daughter's friend's mother's uncle's brother's friend's acquaintance hacked into the database of a Venezuelan pizza restaurant and found out that LEGO Game of Thro... ...you see where I'm going with this?

I believe it's clear TLG is willing to do themes from different types of properties, not just movies or animated TV shows. Look at how they're now getting around to doing an Overwatch line of sets, which is no movie nor an animated TV show. If they're willing to do games, then TV shows with the right target audience should be plausible enough. Whether this will be one such show cannot be said yet, and perhaps it would be unwise to keep our hopes up for the return of the LOTR theme. But then again, who knows? A LOTR theme was something fans once never believed possible in the first place, and then it came.

They're doing LEGO Overwatch. I can't see why they wouldn't be able to draw from the upcoming TV show in order to do more LOTR sets - licensed themes haven't been exclusive to movies in a good few years now. Of course, that doesn't guarantee anything - it'd have to be given the greenlight first. But if they could do a large Minas Tirith set and another Bag End set, they'd already be able to draw in plenty of people.

Nobody else remembers those, you say? That cannot be. Perhaps the former is remembered by fewer people, but "Hey Arnold!" is a renowned cartoon from the 90s that people still talk about today. They even released a movie last year.

A fantasy series. That is an idea I've been pondering about for a while - it would be quite the thing to see it come to fruition! Really hard on my wallet, but a fantastic way to make up for the lack of proper Castle themes, and there's a myriad of things to do with it.

A thousand fans shall be your friends, and if you cannot make way for that many, then perhaps an open window may help... I've personally found that even one fan makes a big change - I've mainly been sorting the add-on to my collection and setting up the new layout of my room these past few weeks, but I feel like a fan should come in handy once I get to building again as well. Wear as little as you can stand and you should be set. I also live in The Netherlands so I can relate to those recent days that seem too hot for even those solutions, though. So I try to keep going and hope things will cool off a little, soon...

'Resistance' has been confirmed to be a CGI show.

Yesterday, I watched Ran, a film by Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. A masterpiece of a film and one that I'd put on a must-see list.

When I was a teenager, I had my close calls with the so-called "dark age", but I've never really been taken by it as I've always had some degree of interest in LEGO, whether it was collecting some smaller sets like CMFs or simply checking up on the news, or peeking at what others were doing. And with the come of The LEGO Movie during my later teens, the hobby seemed to become more accepted and less uncommon. Unlike it did then, having it be accepted no longer bothers me in any way and even most of my friends and family know all about it now, but it's awesome to see it gain more and more widespread recognition, which gives more opportunities to connect with other people who have the same interest, or who just plain like it. And the come of the movie did its part in helping to pull me back to the light, at the time. Now, a good amount of years later, I'm ready to thrust into being more active than I've been in recent times. I don't consider any of my periods of lesser interest as "dark ages" and am glad I've never fallen into one - going strong!

One last picture for this topic - a group shot of all of my dinosaurs thus far. That'll be it for these guys for the foreseeable future, as I'll have a new theme of focus as I thrust back into being more active, but future dinosaurs are certainly not out of the question and I hope that more will join these four, eventually! But for now... Dinosaurs: When Giants Roamed The Earth

Thank you - your Ankylosaurus looks awesome, too! I made one as well and it goes to show how there really are many different ways to skin a cat (or dinosaur), so I say go for it - the more the merrier. (Or so they say. I know their prey won't ) Thank you! Those arms really are something... Makes me wonder what kind of freaks of evolution may have existed that we haven't discovered yet. As for extra pictures... Carnotaurus vs Triceratops

Thanks, both of you!

Carnotaurus At last, a fourth addition to the dinosaur series - and this time, it's a dangerous carnivore to add some suspense to the daily routines of the others...

It's a shame original LEGO games are so rare these days. At least we've got the LEGO movies now, but other than that, it's just a licensed theme-fest all around.

Do you have a crack in your side that needs fixing now? EDIT: Didn't even notice I was responding to a 7-year old post. Wow, don't necro these things, guys.

That's awesome. Candle pieces and tiny flame parts have long been in demand, so I'm glad to see they're finally being introduced in a proper manner. Can't wait to see what other great parts will be introduced!

Voldemort is the one pictured alongside a new tan snake piece, right? That one has got to be real, I say. Does anyone know whether the flame parts contained within the candle pieces can be removed or not?

I'm not into HP, but these new pieces and prints are wonderful and I look forward to seeing all the other ones we'll be getting. I see lots of potentially great items for castle (and) fantasy builders, too. How many of the CMFs have been seen so far?

Hey all, It seems these aren't available anywhere else, so I'm hoping somebody here might be able to sell/trade me some. I need as many of these as possible. I'm from The Netherlands and would be fine with either receiving a PM or a comment here. Just for reference, that's this one:

As you might know, official tan skeletons have existed for a while now... that is, except for the skull. So now I'm wondering, has anybody here managed to get the official skull print on a tan head, or are there any 3rd party vendors who do this inexpensively? Painting stuff up may be possible, but since I want more of an official look to them so they can be put to use in MOCs, I'm trying to look for the most ideal way to do that.